Re: Heart of the debate

[Andreas Pour <pour@mieterra.com>]

Don Sanders wrote:

> Personally I think that it is theoretically possible to license a binary under
> the GPL, but I don't think it make much sense to do so, (it's equivalent to
> applying the GPL to say a file of raw binary data of rainfall measurements).
>
> For instance Section 0 of the GPL requires that in order to apply the GPL to a
> work that work must contain a notice saying it may be "distributed under the
> terms of this General Public License".
>
> I would assume in source code form this would be done by the use of comments.
> However the act of compilation would strip out the comments leaving no such
> notice in the binaries.
>
> Now on this system
> $strings grep | grep -i General
> $strings grep | grep -i GPL
> $strings grep | grep -i GNU
> GNU e?grep, version 1.6
> $
>
> (I also did a strings grep | more just to be sure).

Grep (the binary) does contain the following:

    Copyright (C) 1988, 1992-1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
    warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
    PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

It does not state it is licensed under the GPL, hence it is not a "Program".

> Thus I conclude that the binary for GNU grep contains no such notice and is not
> licensed under the GPL. (The source code is a different matter entirely).
>
> <offtopic>
> I'm wondering if this means the binary is put in the public domain? This could
> be a serious problem for GPLed Java code, as Java decompilers are very good.
> </offtopic>

If there is no license, then distribution is not permitted -- it is still
copyrighted.  However, the license to the source code (the GPL) does permit
redistribution of the binary.  Perhaps this would only hold true if in fact you
have a copy of the source code, and thus have received a license, but distributors
do have such a copy.

Ciao,

Andreas